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Product Description
Product Description
A comic romp featuring the famous 'Berry' Pleydell and based on Yates' own experience of building a house for himself in the Pyren¿es - sumptuous, expensive and idyllically located. The house was seized by the Germans during World War II, and this tale, written soon afterwards, gives a hilarious account of its construction and early life. Yates at the peak of his form.
About the Author
Born Cecil William Mercer into a middle class Victorian family with many Victorian skeletons in the closet, including the conviction for embezzlement from a law firm and subsequent suicide of his great-uncle, Yates' parents somehow scraped together enough money to send him to Harrow. The son of a solicitor, he qualified as a barrister whilst still finding timeto contribute stories to the Windsor Magazine. After the first world war hegave up legal work in favour of writing, which had become his great passion, and completed somethirty books. These rangedfrom light- hearted farce to adventure thrillers. For the former, he created the 'Berry' books which established Yates' reputation as a writer of witty, upper-crust romances. For the latter, he created ther character Richard Chandos, who recounts the adventures of Jonah Mansel, a classic gentleman sleuth. As a consequence of his education and experience, Yates' books feature the genteel life, a nostalgic glimpse at Edwardian decadence and a number of swindling solicitors. In his hey day, and as testament to hisfine writing, Dornford Yates' work was placed in the bestseller list. Indeed, 'Berry' is one of the great comic creations of twentieth century fiction; the 'Chandos' titles also beingsuccessfully adapted for television. Along with Sapper and John Buchan, Yates dominated the adventure book market of the inter war years. Finding the English climate utterly unbearable, Yates chose to live in the French Pyrenees for eighteen years, before moving on to Rhodesia where he died in 1960. 'Mr Yates can be recommended to anyone who thinks the British take themselves too seriously.' - Punch 'We appreciate fine writing when we come across it, and a wit that is ageless united to a courtesy that is extinct'-Cyril Connolly
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
...so must have read it a dozen times, far more than any other book. It's the penultimate and best of the Berry books and like most of them it's a good story and VERY FUNNY. Having just had a day in Pau (the setting for THTBB), I pulled it off the shelf today and am finding it as unputdownable as ever.
It will seem a period piece to many readers (published in 1945)but good characterisation and good humour are timeless.
Yates' Chandos thrillers are good too, his other stand-alone novels less so.
It will seem a period piece to many readers (published in 1945)but good characterisation and good humour are timeless.
Yates' Chandos thrillers are good too, his other stand-alone novels less so.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I thouroughly enjoyed this delightful book, set in southern France on the borders of Spain, as I did with all the "Berry" books. The chapter regarding the selection of a soap dish is my most memorable section, but Berry makes me laugh many times in this book.
It's a relatively light hearted review of a serious subject with a definite undertone of British Aristocracy in action. Enjoy!
TeeC
It's a relatively light hearted review of a serious subject with a definite undertone of British Aristocracy in action. Enjoy!
TeeC
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The Pleydell family spend an early twentieth-century motoring holiday in the south of France in this, one of the better Berry books. Berry, his wife Daphne, her brother Boy and his wife Adele, and Jonah and Jill (Boy's and Berry's cousins -- complicated, isn't it?) steer the twin cars Ping and Pong through a series of upper-class adventures involving servile Frenchmen and -women, helpful Spanish, and (this time) no horrid Germans...these sketches are thistledown recollections of an age long gone.
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